In the current realm of digital communication, users share information they consider important over the Internet, using published content such as wikis, blogs, social networking and other Web site content publication forums. Unfortunately, digital content can include valuable as well as biased, false and demagogic information.
As such, the Web has become a familiar way of acquiring and sharing information that also allows content owners and network users to contribute and express themselves. Thus, information providers (e.g. Web site owners) and information seekers (e.g. network users) will rely more and more on content available over the Web, and therefore the ability to provide as well as to access trusted Web content will become even more essential.
Trustworthiness of Web content, as well as access to content via Web navigation tools, refers to the believability and trustworthiness of a content/navigation tool source. In the case of Web trustworthiness, it refers to the trustworthiness of the content available on the Web. Web content and web page navigation tools can take many forms including text, sounds, videos, and images as well as hyperlinks, drop down menus, etc.
It is a disadvantage with the current structure of Web pages that multimedia and/or navigational tools encountered by the network user can unknowingly include false or otherwise malicious content. While it is true that network users and content providers alike enjoy the lower cost and increased access to information provided by the current world of interconnected Web pages, i.e. enabled users to access content from a number of deemed appropriate sources including Websites, blogs, e-news, wikis, e-books, e-libraries and e-journals, what bears important consideration is whether the vast amount of Web information provided and accessed can be relied upon to be trustworthy. As such, it can be very difficult for a typical network user to adequately verify given information without any prior knowledge, and the same is true for content providers in being able to prove to the network users that the information published is accurate and deemed as trustworthy.